Harris, Robinson. The Apology of Aristides on behalf of the Christians : from a Syriac ms. preserved...

8/7/2019 Harris, Robinson. The Apology of Aristides on behalf of the Christians : from a Syriac ms. preserved on Mount Sinai

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FROM -THE- LIBRARY- OF -- KGNRAD - BURDACH


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Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2007 with funding fromMicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/apologyofaristidOOarisrich


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TEXTS AND STUDIESCONTBIBUTIONS TO

BIBLICAL AND PATRISTIC LITERATURE

EDITED BYJ. ARMITAGE ROBINSON B.D.

FELLOW OF Christ's college Cambridge

VOL. I.No. 1. THE APOLOGY OF AEISTIDES

SECOND EDITION

CAMBRIDGEAT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1893


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Eoution: C. J. CLAY and SONS,CAMBEIDGE UNIVEKSITY PKESS WAKEHOUSE,

AVE MAEIA LANE.

(CambrilJfie: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.ILeipjiQ: F. A. BROCKHAUS.

l^ebj gork: MACMILLAN AND CO.


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THE APOLOGY OF AEISTIDESON BEHALF OF THE CHRISTIANS

FROM A SYRIAC MS. PRESERVED ON MOUNT SINAIEDITED

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND TRANSLATION BYJ. RENDEL HARRIS M.A.FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

AND UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN PALAEOGRAPHY

WITH AN APPENDIXCONTAINING THE MAIN PORTION OF

THE ORIGINAL GHEEK TEXTBY

J. ARMITAGE ROBINSON B.D.FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF CHRIST's COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

SECOND EDITION

CAMBRIDGEAT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1893[All Rights reserved]


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CambriljgePKINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND RONS,AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

SURDACH


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PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.r I 1HE first part of this tract contains the Syriac text of the lost-L Apology of Aristides, accompanied by such comments andelucidations as I have been able to give to the subject. It is myfirst venture in Syriac, and I am thankful to my learned friendswho have from time to time assisted me with suggestions andcriticisms for the elimination of some of the more glaring errors.Amongst them I may mention especially Professor Bensly, ofCambridge, and Professor Isaac A. Hall, of New York. In theattempt to give the Armenian fragments of the Apology, in sucha form as may make them accessible for critical use, I have hadthe valuable aid of Mr Conybeare, of Oxford, who placed at mydisposal the results of his own work at Edschmiazin.

When the pages were almost through the printer's hands, myfriend Mr J. A. Robinson, of Christ's College, by one of thosehappy accidents, as we call them, upon which progress depends,discovered that substantially the whole of the Greek text wasextant, and had been incorporated in that charming half-Greekand half-Oriental story, the Lives of Barlaam and Joasaph. Ofcourse this means that, for the greater part of the Apology ofAristides, we have copies and versions in good number (Greek,Latin, Ethiopic, Arabic, Old French, etc.). This opens quite a newfield before the student of Christian Apologetics. Need I say howgladly I make way for him in the Appendix, which will reallybe the text itself; and that I say in the language of the Actsof St Perpetua : " Hie ordinem totum Apologiae iam hinc ipsenarrabit...manu sua et suo sensu."

J. RENDEL HARRIS.


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PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

THE First Edition of the Apology of Aristides having beenexhausted with unexpected rapidity, it has seemed betterto reprint the book as it stands, rather than to attempt to recastit before there has been a full opportunity for such substantialcriticism as will, it is to be hoped, throw new light upon thesubject. Accordingly the Second Edition is a reprint of the Firstwith a few verbal corrections. The only change to which atten-tion need be called is the substitution of a fresh literal translationof a few lines of the Armenian Version cited on p. 78. This Ihave introduced with a view of shewing how much more closelythe Armenian follows the Greek at certain points than might besupposed when it is read only through the medium of translationsmade before the Greek had been discovered. No future edition ofthe Apology can be considered complete which does not contain thetext of the Armenian fragment with a closely literal translation.

J. A. R.

Christ's College,August, 1892.


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NOTE.

With the aid of the photographs taken by Prof. Harris theSyriac text has been carefully revised by Prof. Bensly, who hastaken special pains with the reproduction of the punctuation ofthe MS. There seems occasionally to be some deviation from theordinary system in the use of the diacritical points: but as it isimpossible to tell from the photographs to what date the punc-tuation belongs, it has seemed better to reproduce it withoutattempting to mend it.

The English translation was in the first instance made byProf. Harris : but the discovery of the Greek made it necessarythat it should undergo a complete revision, in order that scholarswho do not read Syriac might be able to form a better estimate ofthe relation of the Syriac to the Greek, than could be given bya translation made without any reference to the latter. Moreoverin several places the Greek cast new light upon the Syriac whereit was obscure before. The task of revision would have beenentirely beyond my power, but for the kind patience of Prof.Bensly, who allowed me to read the whole piece through withhim. At his suggestion too I have added, within brackets, a fewnotes in addition to those made by Prof. Harris.

The Facsimile of a page of the Syriac MS. has been madefrom one of Prof. Harris's photographs. It corresponds withOA 19\A 22 of this edition.

J. A. R.


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INTEODUCTION.The present volume contains one of the earliest of the

Apologies made to the Roman Emperors on behalf of theChristians, that, namely, which was said to have been presentedto the Emperor Hadrian by an Athenian philosopher of thename of Aristides. Our information concerning this Apology hashitherto been of the scantiest kind, depending chiefly upon certainallusions of Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History and in hisGhronicon; as Eusebius did not, however, preserve any extractsfrom the book and presents only a most obscure figure in aphilosopher's garb as its author, while subsequent writers haveadded little or nothing to what they found in Eusebius, it mustbe admitted that our ideas as to the character and scope of oneof the earliest apologetic treatises on Christianity were about asvague as it was possible for them to be. It is true that there wasa suspicion abroad which came from Jerome that the lost workof Aristides had been imitated by Justin in his Apology, andJerome had also ventured the opinion that the Apology waswoven out of materials derived from the philosophers : but itwas almost impossible to put any faith in Jerome's statements,which are usually mere editorial expansions and colourings ofwhat he found in the pages of Eusebius. Not that there was anyd priori improbability in the opinion that one Christian Apologisthad imitated another, for almost all the Apologies that are knownto us are painfully alike, and it would not be difl&cult to maintainof any two of them selected at random that one of them hadborrowed from or imitated the other. The difficulty lay in thewant of literary faith in statements made by Jerome ; but even if

H. A. 1


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2 THE APOLOGYthis confidence had not been wanting, we should not have beenvery much the wiser.

In the case of a companion Apology to that of Aristides,we were more happily placed for forming an opinion ; sinceEusebius not only describes an Apology presented to the EmperorHadrian by a certain Quadratus, at the time of one of the imperialvisits to Athens, but gives us also some striking and powerfulsentences, just enough to convince one that the document wasmarked by argumentative force and spiritual insight, and couldnot have been a mere conventional tirade against paganism.Until recent times, then, all that could be said on the subjectof these lost Apologies was that we had Eusebian tradition fortheir existence, Eusebian authority for their date, and a Eusebianextract from one of them as a specimen of sub- apostolic defence,a mere brick from a vanished house.

The mist, however, lifted some time ago, when the learnedArmenians of the Lazarist monastery at Venice added to theobligations under which they have so often laid the scholarly andChristian world, by publishing an Armenian translation of theopening chapters of the lost Apology of Aristides ; and althoughtheir document was received in some quarters^ with incredulity,it will be seen, by what we have presently to bring forward, thatthe fragment which they printed was rightly entitled, and thatthey had at least made the way for a satisfactory conception of

^ Especially by M. Kenan, who in his Origines de Christianisme, vol. vi. p. vi.,says: *' Le present volume 6tait imprim6 quand j'ai eu connaissance d'unepublication des m6khitaristes de Venise contenant en Arm6nien, avec traductionLatine, deux moreeaux, dont I'un serait I'Apologie adress^e par Aristide a Adrien.L'authenticite de cette pi^ce ne soutient pas I'examen. C'est une compositionplate, qui r^pondrait bien mal a ce que Eus^be et S. J6rome disent du talentde I'auteur et surtout a cette particularity que I'ouvrage 6tait contextum philoso-phorum sententiis. L'ecrit Arm^nien ne presente pas une seule citation d'auteurprofane. La th^ologie qu'on y trouve, en ce qui concerne la Trinity, I'incarnation,la quality de m^re de Dieu attribuee a Marie, est post^rieure au iv^ si^cle.L'^rudition historique ou plutot mythologique est aussi bien indigne d'un 6crivaindu 11^ si^cle. Le second ' sermon ' publi6 par les mekhitaristes a encore moinsde droit a etre attribu6 au philosophe Chr6tien d'Ath^nes : le manuscrit porteAristaeus : c'est une hom61ie insignificable sur le bon larron.

M. Renan was rightly opposed in this sweeping negation of authenticity byDoulcet, who pointed out relations between Aristides and the Timaeus as ajustification of the philosophical character of the work. Unfortunately Doulcet


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OF ARISTIDES. 8the dogmatics which underlay the apologetics. This was a greatgain. Moreover their published fragment shewed traces of aninteresting originality of method in the classification of thereligious beliefs of the time.

Our contribution to the subject consists of a Syriac translationof the whole, or substantially the whole, of the missing Apology.We were so happy as to discover this text in a volume of Syriacextracts preserved in the library of the convent of St Catharine,upon Mount Sinai, during a delightful visit which we paid tothose majestic solitudes and silences in the spring of 1889. Ourcopy has suffered somewhat in the course of time from suc-cessive transcriptions, and needs occasionally the hand of thecritical corrector. The language and thought of the writer are,however, so simple and straightforward that the limits of error aremuch narrower than they would be in a document where the struc-ture was more highly complicated; the unintelligible sentenceswhich accumulate in a translation so much more rapidly thanin the copying of an original document, are almost entirelyabsent. In fact the writer is more of a child than a philosopher,a child well-trained in creed and well-practised in ethics, ratherthan either a dogmatist defending a new system or an iconoclastdestroying an old one: but this simplicity of treatment, so farfrom being a weakness, adds often greatly to the natural im-pressiveness of the subject and gives the work a place by theside of the best Christian writing of his age. But, before goingfurther, it will be best to describe a little more closely the volumefrom which our text is taken.

Description of the MS.The MS. from which we have copied is numbered 16 amongst

the Syriac MSS. of the Sinaitic convent. The MS. may bewent too far, by trying to identify Aristides with the author of the Epistle toDiognetus.

Hamack {TheoL LZ. 1879, no. 16, col. 375 f.) was very favourable to thegenuineness of the fragment, and made some excellent points in its defence.

M. Renan will now have the opportunity of verifying for himself that the termTheotokos, to which he objected so strongly as savouring of the fourth century, isnot in the Syriac text.

12


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4 THE APOLOGYreferred to the 7th century, and is written in two columns tothe page. The book is made up of a number of separate treatisesand extracts, ahnost all of which are ethical in character. Thuson fol. 1 6 we have

or, the history of the Lives of the Fathers, translated from Greekinto Syriac.

On fol. 2 bApparently we have here the Liber Paradisi or Lives of

the Holy Fathers of the Desert, of which many copies existin Greek, though it may be doubted whether there is any criticaledition. Some portions of this Syriac version were published atUpsala by Tullberg and his disciples, in 1851, from MSS. in theVatican and in the British Museum. In our MS. the currentheading of the pages is

f^^i^sa r^l'.TAjjL*.! r


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OF ARISTIDES. 5On fol. 121 b a>ai-^,^vx^.i K'ijsarelswA discourse of Pythagoras,

probably the same as is published in Lagarde's Analecta, pp. 195201.On fol. 126 a r^^\:sfis Aj^.1 a)CVAi\\oA.i K'-ws^relsaA discourse of Plutarch, on Anger, for which see Lagarde,Analecta Syriaca, pp. 186195.On fol. 132 b

A discourse of Lucius (Lucianus), that we should not receiveslander against our friends : Trepl tov firj paBiay^ irLar^vevv BcaffoXfj.

Apparently the same as is given in Sachau, Inedita, pp. 116.On fol. 140 aA discourse made by a philosopher, De Anima :

probably the same as is given in Sachau, Inedita, as Philosophorumde anima sententiae.

On fol. 143 aor, the Counsel of Theano, a female philosopher of the schoolof Pythagoras : see Sachau, Inedita, pp. 7075, as TheanoSententiae \

On fol. 145 6 a collection of Sayings of the Philosophers,beginning with

V2K' T^*!.vy -^\^ *^ ' (Plato the Wise said).On fol. 151 b^ijsaX Ills .1 ^cnon.-i reLQ.z.Q^ rdL^sn:%n r^\jyir^jsn

A first discourse in explanation of Ecclesiastes, made by MarJohn the Solitary for the blessed Theognis. See Wright's Gat. ofthe Syr. MSS. in the Brit. Mus. p. 996.

1 See Wright's Catalogue, p. 1160. The general contents of this MS. (Brit.Mus. 987) should be compared with those of the MS. here described : it containse.g. the Apology of Melito and the Hypomnemata of Ambrose, and variousPhilosophical treatises.


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6 THE APOLOGYAnd from fol. 214 a onward the volume is occupied with

translations from the Homilies of Chrysostom on Matthew.The above description will shew something of the value of the

MS. It will also suggest that it was the ethical character of theApology of Aristides that secured its incorporation with thevolume. Let us now pass on to discuss the effect which thisrecovered document has upon our estimate of the Eusebianstatements concerning the earliest Church Apologists.

Aristides and Eusehius.According to the Chronicon of Eusebius we have the following

date for the Apologies of Quadratus and Aristides1. The Armenian version of the Chronico7i gives under the

year 124 A.D. as follows01. A. Abr. Imp. Kom.

^^226 2140 8^^i

Adrianus Eleusinarum rerum gnarusfuit multaque (dona) Atheniensiumlargitus est.

* Romanorum ecclesiae episcopatumexcepit Septimus Telesphorus an-nis XI.

Codratus apostolorum auditor et Aristides nostri dogmatis(nostrae rei) philosophus Atheniensis Adriano supplicationesdedere apologeticas (apologiae, responsionis) ob mandatum.Acceperat tamen et a Serennio (s. Serenno) splendido praeside(iudice) scriptum de Christianis, quod nempe iniquum sit occidereeos solo rumore sine inquisitione, neque ulla accusatione. ScribitArmonicus Fundius (Phundius) proconsuli Asianorum ut sine ullodamno et incusatione non damnarentur; et exemplar edicti eiushucusque circumfertur.One of the Armenian MSS. (Cod. N) transfers this noticeabout the Apologists to the following year, and it is believedthat this represents more exactly the time of Hadrian's firstvisit to Athens (125126 A.D.). With this agrees the datingof the Latin version of Jerome. We may say then that it isthe intention of Eusebius to refer the presentation of both these


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OP ARISTIDES. 7Apologies to the time when Hadrian was spending his first winterin Athens ; and to make them the reason for the Imperial rescriptto Minucius Fundanus which we find attached to the first Apologyof Justin Martyr. And since Minucius Fundanus and his pre-decessor Granianus were consuls sufFect in the years 106 and107, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they held the Asianpro-consulate in the years A.D. 123 and 124, or 124 and 125. Ifthen Aristides and Quadratus presented apologies to Hadrian, it isreasonable to connect these Apologies with his first Athenianwinter and not with the second (a.d. 129130).

But here we begin to meet with difficulties ; for, in the firstplace, much doubt has been thrown on the genuineness of therescript of the emperor to Minucius Fundanus; in the secondplace there is a suspicious resemblance between Quadratus theApologist and another Quadratus who was bishop of Athens in thereign of Antoninus Pius, succeeding to Publius whom Jeromeaffirms to have been martyred ; and in the third place ournewly-recovered document cannot by any possibility be referredto the period suggested by Eusebius, and there is only the barestpossibility of its having been presented to the Emperor Hadrianat all. Let us examine this last point carefully, in order to answer,as far as our means will permit, the question as to the time ofpresentation of the Apology of Aristides and the person or personsto whom it was addressed.

The Armenian fragment is headed as followsTo the Emperor Hadrian Caesar, fi'om Aristides, philosopher

of Athens.There is nothing, at first sight, to lead us to believe that this

is the original heading ; such a summary merely reflects theEusebian tradition and might be immediately derived from it.

When we turn to the Syriac Version, we find a somewhatsimilar preface, to the following effect.Apology made by Aristides the Philosopher before Hadrianus

the King, concerning the worship of Almighty God.But this, which seems to be a mere literary heading, proper,

shall we say, for one out of a collection of apologies, is immediately


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8 THE APOLOGYfollowed by another introduction which cannot be anything elsethan a part of the primitive apology. It runs as follows...Caesar Titus Hadrianus Antoninus, Worshipful and Clement,

from Marcianus Aristides, philosopher of Athens.The additional information which we derive from this sentence

is a sufficient guarantee of its genuineness; we have the firstname of the philosopher given, as Marcianus; and we have thename of the emperor addressed given at length. To our astonish-ment this is not Hadrian, but his successor Antoninus Pius, whobears the name of Hadrian by adoption from Publius AeliusHadrianus. Unless therefore we can shew that there is an erroror a deficiency in the opening sentence of the Apology we shallbe obliged to refer it to the time of the emperor Antoninus Pius,and to say that Eusebius has made a mistake in reading the titleof the Apology, or has followed some one who had made themistake before him. And it seems tolerably clear that if anerror exist at all in such a precise statement as ours, it must beof the nature of an omission. Let us see what can be urged infavour of this theory. We will imagine that the original titlecontained the names both of Hadrian and of Antoninus Pius,his adviser and companion, much in the same way as Justin openshis first Apology with the words, " to the Emperor Titus AeliusHadrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Caesar and to his son Veris-simus the Philosopher, and to Lucius the Philosopher, natural sonof Caesar and adopted son of Pius.... I Justin...have written thefollowing appeal and supplication." In support of this theory wemight urge the apparent dislocation of the opening sentence ofour Apology. The Syriac version is clearly wrong in its punctua-tion, for example, since it transfers the expression A^ .tm*t


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OF ARISTIDES. VEmperor Caesar belongs to a previous name which has droppedout and supply the connective necessary, so as to read, "To theEmperor Aelius Hadrianus Augustus Caesar and to Titus Hadria-nus Antoninus." In support of this we may urge that theadjectives which follow are marked in the Syriac with the signof the plural, as if the writer imagined himself to be addressingmore persons than one. Supposing then that this is the casewe should still have to face the question as to the name givento Antonine ; if he is called Hadrian, this must mean that theApology is presented at some time subsequent to his adoption,which is generally understood to have taken place in the yearA.D. 138, only a little while before Hadrian's death. So that inany case we should be prohibited by our document from datingthe Apology in question either in the first visit of Hadrian toAthens or in the second visit, and we should only have thebarest possibility that it was presented to Hadrian at all. Itwould have, so to speak, to be read to him on his death-bed atBaiae. Seeing then the extreme difficulty of maintaining theHadrianic or Eusebian hypothesis, we are driven to refer theApology to the reign of Antoninus Pius, and to affirm thatEusebius made a mistake in reading or quoting the title of thebook, in which mistake he has been followed by a host of otherand later writers. If he followed a text which had the heading asin the Syriac, he has misunderstood the person spoken of as Hadrianthe king ; and if on the other hand he takes the opening sentencesas his guide, he has made a superficial reference, which a closerreading would have corrected. All that is necessary to make theSyriac MS. intelligible is the introduction of a simple prepositionalprefix before the imperial name, and the deletion of the ribbuipoints in the adjectives.

Nor is this all ; for there can be no doubt that the twoadjectives in question (reliiaMVsao f


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10 THE APOLOGYviz. Augustus Pius, which the Syriac has treated as adjectives,and connected by a conjunction. Moreover this translation ofevae^ri^ on the part of the Syriac interpreter shews that themeaning of the title is ' clement ' or ' compassionate,' rather thanthat of mere filial duty, which agrees with what we find in aletter of Marcus Aurelius to Faustina ; " haec (dementia) patremtuum imprimis Pii nomine ornavit\"Now how will this conclusion react upon the companionApology of Quadratus? We could, no doubt, maintain thatit leaves the question where it found it. The mistake madeby Eusebius need not have been a double error, and the correctreference to Hadrian for Quadratus's Apology would have furnisheda starting-point for the incorrect reasoning with regard to Aristides.On this supposition we should simply erase the reference to Aristidesfrom Eusebius and his imitators.

But there is one difficulty to be faced, and that is the factthat we were in confusion over Quadratus before w^e reached anyconclusion about Aristides. And our investigation has not helpedto any elucidation of the confusion. Read for example the languagein which Eusebius {H. E. Iv. 3) describes the presentation of theApology.

AtXt09 'ABpiavo


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OF ARISTIDES. 11May we not also infer that the opening sentences of the

Quadratus-Apology must have contained the dedication AtXtw'ASptavQ) which we find suggested above ? But when we havemade these suppositions the similarity between the two apologiesin the titles is very great, for Aelius Hadrianus is also a partof the adopted name of the emperor Antoninus.

And let us look at the matter from another point of view.One of our early sources of information about Quadratus, thebishop of Athens, is found in a passage of a letter of Dionysiusof Corinth preserved by Eusebius, and certainly Dionysius ofCorinth ought to be good authority for Athenian religious historyof the time immediately preceding his own. Eusebius does notactually quote the letter which Dionysius wrote to the church atAthens, but he tells us its scope and makes it easy to divineits contents : his language is as follows :

1^ Be {iinaToXrj) 7rpb


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12 THE APOLOGYreign of Hadrian. We do not indeed attach any especial weightto Jerome's statement as to the time of the persecution, which issimply a combination made up out of passages from Eusebiusconcerning Quadratus and Dionysius with slight amplifications.He can hardly be right in placing the persecution under the reignof Hadrian, for, as Lightfoot points out\ Eusebius, from whomhe draws his facts, knows nothing about it : moreover we haveinformation from Melito'^ that Antoninus Pius did actually writeto Athens to suppress a persecution of the Christians. But, onthe other hand, may he not be right after all in his identificationof the bishop Quadratus with the Apologist, and do not thecircumstances of the persecution suggested by Melito and testifiedto by Dionysius exactly suit the presentation of the Apology tothe emperor ?

While then we would readily admit that, as long as theApology of Aristides was held to belong to the time of anAthenian visit of Hadrian, the Apology of Quadratus naturallyremained with it, yet on the other hand when the Hadrianhypothesis is untenable for Aristides, will not the Quadratus-bishop and Quadratus-apologist naturally run together, and beone and the same person ? Or is there anything to prevent theidentification ? The words ' apostolorum discipulus,' used byJerome, and the corresponding words of Eusebius, diroo-roXcjvcLKovGrrj^, can hardly be held to militate seriously against thishypothesis, for they are evident deductions from the passage whichEusebius quotes from the Apology of Quadratus about the sickpeople healed by the Lord, ' some of whom continued down to ourtimes.' Jerome says boldly that Quadratus had seen very manyof the subjects of our Lord's miracles ; which is in any case a grossexaggeration. But if such persons, either many or few, had reallylived into the age of Quadratus, it would be very difficult to placehiemem, invisens Eleusinam, et omnibus paene Graeciae sacris initiatus dedissetoccasionem his, qui Christianos oderant, absque praecepto imperatoris vexarecredentes, porrexit ei librum &c."

1 Lightfoot, Ignatius, ed. ii. ii. 541.2 Euseb. H. E. iv. 26, ex apologia Melitonis, 6 5e irar-qp crov Kai aov to, a^fiirauTci.

SioiKOVfTOS avT(^f Tttis iroXeaL irepi tov txrjdev veurepl^eiv vepl ijfiQv ^ypaxpev iv oh Kaiirpbs AapLcraalovs Kai irpos QeaaaXoviKeis Kai 'Kdrjvalovs koX irpos wavras "EWrivas. Thiscertainly looks like an outbreak of persecution in Greece.


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14 THE APOLOGYto notice, especially in view of the obviously friendly attitude ofthe writer towards the Jews, that his creed contained a clause tothe effect that

' He was crucified by the Jews,'perhaps without the clause that was current in later times, ' underPontius Pilate.' Now I am aware that there are some personsto whom this will seem an argument for a later date ; for exampleM. Renan, Origines VI. p. 277, says " les Chretiens commen^aienta faire retomber sur I'ensemble de la nation juive un reprocheque surement ni Pierre ni Jacques ni I'auteur de I'Apocalypsene songeaient a lui adresser, celui d'avoir crucifie J^sus." Itwould be interesting however to compare this statement ofM. Renan with the language of Peter in Acts ii. 36, " Whom yecrucified;" of James in Ep. v. 6, "ye murdered the Just;" orwith the writer of the Apocalypse where he describes Jerusalemas the spiritual Sodom and Egypt, "where also our Lord wascrucified."

The very same charge is made by Justin in his dialogue withTrypho^ who uses language very similar to that of the Epistle ofJames, and in discussing the miseries which have befallen theJewish race, says pointedly "Fairly and justly have these thingscome upon you ; for Ye slew the Just One." Why should weassume such a sentiment to be a mark of late date ?

These references do not, however, suggest that the sentencein question was in the Creed. To prove that, we should have togo much farther afield, for the known forms of early creeds donot seem to contain it: if, however, we were to examine theApocryphal Christian Literature of the early centuries, we should,no doubt, find many traces of the lost sentence. For example, itcomes over and over in the Apocryphal Acts of John, a Gnosticdocument which Wright edited and translated from the Syriac.Here we find the sentence frequently in the very connexion whichit would have with other Christian dogmatic statements if it hadbeen incorporated with some actual form of the Symbol of Faith.When we find that these Acts give us as the staple of Apostolicteaching that

1 Dial. 16.


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OF ARISTIDES. 15"The Jews crucified Him on the tree,And He diedAnd rose after three days,

And He is God,And He ascended to HeavenAnd is at the right hand of His Father"

we must admit that the sequence of ideas, and probably the verywords are from a Creed.

The same thing is true when we find the Apostle speaking,and saying

"In the name of Jesus the Messiah, God,Whom the Jews crucified and killed in JerusalemAnd He died and was buriedAnd rose after three daysAnd lo ! He is above in HeavenAt the right hand of His Father."

At all events we may maintain that there is evidence for thediffusion of the Creed in early times under a slightly differentform to that generally received, and if so, we may call it a markof antiquity to have the Apology of Aristides expressing itself tothat effect; for certainly no such sentence in the generally re-ceived Creed existed in later times, however widely the sentimentagainst the Jews may have been diffused.

It is interesting also to compare the custom of the early Chris-tians in the matter of fasting, that they might relieve by theirself-denial the necessities of the poor. This is precisely what wefind described so fully in the Similitudes of Hermas {Sim. v.3), where the directions are given that on the day when we fastwe are ourselves to eat only bread and water, and calculate theamount saved thereby and bestow it on the poor. Now very manyof the later fathers teach the same doctrine, that fasting and almsare conjoined in duty and merit, and that it is proper, under cer-tain circumstances, for the church to call for such an expression ofreligion. But what makes for the antiquity of the Apology is thatthe whole church fasts, not merely one day, but two or three days,and that not by direction or rule, but because they are poor andhave no other way of meeting the needs of those who are poorer


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16 THE APOLOGYthan themselves. It is a spontaneous, rather than a commandedcharity, dictated at once by love and necessity. Can such a prac-tice in such a form be other than early ? But if the Apology isearly in its doctrines and practices, where shall we place it ? Mustit not be at least as early as the first years of the reign ofAntoninus Pius ?

But here we are in difficulty again, for, if we assume that theApology was presented to Antoninus Pius in person, we have nosatisfactory evidence that Antoninus was ever in the East, or inGreece after his accession, and even the suspicions as to an Easternvisit belong to a later period of his reign, say A.D. 154. DidAristides present the Apology at Kome or elsewhere ? May weinfer from his calling himself Marcianus Aristides, Philosopher ofAthens, that he was in some city not his own natural dwelling-place ? For that he came from Athens is deducible not only fromhis own statement but also from the fact to which we havealready alluded that Antoninus wrote to Athens to suppress apersecution of the Christians. But this almost implies thatAntoninus was not in Athens when he received the Apology, orwhere would be the need of writing a letter at all ? He musthave been out of Greece.

Only two solutions seem to present themselves, (i) that Aristidesjourneyed to Rome to present his apology; (ii) that Antoninusmade some unrecorded visit to the East.Now with regard to the second of these suppositions there isreason, outside of our argument and its necessities, to believe thatsome such visit must have taken place, and that Antoninus heldcourt at Smyi-na, some time after his accession to the throne.

In the celebrated letter of Irenaeus to Florinus (written pro-bably later than A.D. 189) the writer speaks of having seen Florinuswhen he lived in lower Asia with Polycarp, when he was at theroyal court, and rising in esteem there ; he, Irenaeus, being at thattime a boy. Now this seems to imply some kind of royal residenceat Smyrna ; but it has always been difficult to determine what ismeant by such a royal residence. The problem is discussed byLightfoot in his Ignatius (ed. ii. vol. i. p. 449). It cannot beHadrian's visit in A.D. 129, which would be too early; and Light-foot thinks that although there is some reason for believing


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OF ARISTIDES. 17Antoninus Pius to have been in Syria, and presumably also in AsiaMinor, somewhere about A.D. 154, 155, this date is too late, onaccount of the mention of Polycarp. Accordingly Lightfoot frames,with some hesitation, the following hypothesis : "About the year186 T. Aurelius Fulvus was proconsul of Asia. Within two orthree years of his proconsulate he was raised to the imperial throne,and is known as Antoninus Pius. Even during his proconsulateomens marked him as the future occupant of the imperial throne....Florinus may have belonged to his suite, and Irenaeus in afteryears might well call the proconsul's retinue the 'royal Court'by anticipation, especially if Florinus accompanied him toRome, &c."

This ingenious hypothesis only fails to meet our requirementon one point, viz. that the name given to Antoninus in the Apologyis the name given him after adoption, and so is subsequent toFeb. 25, A.D. 138.

But suppose we imagine a visit of Antoninus to Asia Minorsome years later than this, we could find then some support forthe theory that Aristides presented his Apology to the Emperor atSmyrna.

For we might say that the name of Marcianus is a conspicuousone in the Church at Smyrna. When the Church of the Sm3rrnaeanswrote for the Church of Philomelium the account of the martyrdomof Polycarp, they employed to compose the narrative a personwhom they characterise as our brother Marcianus^ Now it isworthy of note that this person must have been conspicuous in theChurch of Smyrna, for he is probably the same person to whomIrenaeus, whose relations with the Church at Smyrna are so intimate,dedicated one of his treatisesI Moreover the relations of theChurch to the Emperor through Florinus would have been favour-able for the presentation of the Apology.

Let us then say, in recapitulation, that we have found it difficultto assign the Apology to any other period than the early years ofthe reign of Antoninus Pius ; and it is at least conceivable that itmay have been presented to the Emperor, along with other Chris-tian writings, during an unrecorded visit of his to his ancient seatof government in Smyrna.

1 Mart. Polyc. 20. 2 Euseb. H. E. v. 26.H. A. 2


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18 THE APOLOGYThere are a few later references to Aristides to which we

have drawn no attention hitherto, because it seemed to be impos-sible to extract any trustworthy data from them: they are asfollows

(1) A passage in a letter of Jerome to Magnus, "Aristidesphilosophus, vir eloquentissimus, eidem principi (Hadriano) Apolo-geticum pro Christianis obtulit, contextum philosophorum senten-tiis, quem imitatus postea Justinus, et ipse philosophus." This issimply a rechauffe of the Eusebian data, with reflections thereupon.Justin being a philosopher, his Apology naturally imitates thephilosophical treatise which has preceded his own.

(2) Martyrologium Vetus Romanum^ ad V. Nonas Octobris." Athenis Dionysii Areopagitae sub Hadriano diversis tormen-

tis passi, ut Aristides testis est in opere quod de Christianareligione composuit ; hoc opus apud Athenienses inter antiquorummemorias clarissimum tenetur." Aristides himself is commemo-rated on ii. Kal. Septr. and it is said that in his treatise he main-tained " quod Christus Jesus solus esset Deus."

It would be very interesting to determine how the Martyro-logies arrived at these statements. Our Syriac Apology certainlycontains no trace of an allusion to Dionysius the Areopagite ; onthe other hand it fairly enough teaches the Divinity of Christ.We would dismiss the statements at once as archaeological fictionsif it had not been that evidence has been produced for the exist-ence of a Latin version of Aristides. Harnack's attention wasdrawn by the pastor Kawerau to the following letter of Witzel toBeatus Rhenanus, dated Bartholomew's day 1534. "Dedisti nobisEusebium, praeterea Tertullianum. Restat ut pari nitore desJustinum Martyrem, Papiam et Ignatium graece excusum. Amabo,per Bibliothecas oberrare, venaturus si quid scripsit Quadratus,si praeter epistolam alia Polycarpus, si nonnihil praeter Apologeti-con Aristides. Despice, si quae supersunt Cornelii et tanta bono-rum librorum panolethria. Plures sunt Dionysii scriptores, sedomnes praeter unum Areopagitem desyderamus, qui utinam suaquoque in lingua extaret. Utinam exorirentur Stromata demen-tis, breviter quicquid est Kpovlov. Tineae pascuntur libris, quibus

1 Migne, Patr. Lat. cxxiii.


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OF ARISTIDES. 19homines pasci debebamus &c." I have given the extract fromHamack's copy^ not having access to the original letter.

It seems to me that Witzel's language almost implies that theApology was already in print in Latin. Is it conceivable that someportion of the Apology may have found its way into print beforethe year 1534 and remained unnoticed in later times ?

But even if it existed in manuscript, we must leave it an openquestion whether it may not have contained some matter which iswanting in the Syriac ; nevertheless it is ct priori extremely impro-bable that the story about the martyrdom of Dionysius the Areo-pagite can belong here.

Celsus and Aristides.It may be worth while to point to a possible connexion between

the True Word of Celsus and the Apology of Aristides.1. Celsus is undoubtedly very nearly contemporary with

Aristides; although it is difficult to determine his date exactly(and even Origen was doubtful as to his identity), we may probablysay with a good assurance of safety that he was at the zenithof his influence and fame under the reign of Antoninus Pius.

2. It is peculiarly difficult to determine what Christianbooks had come into the hands of Celsus, whether gospels orother literature. We know however for certain that he had readthe dialogue between Jason and Papiscus, a work of Aristo ofPella, written not long after the close of the Jewish war underHadrian, and so at a period very near to the one in which we areinterested. Now if he were reading contemporary Christianliterature he could hardly miss Aristides.

3. And since we find more and closer parallels between thefragments preserved by Origen from the great work of Celsusand our Apology than between most of the other books of thecentury, it is at least a fair question whether Aristides was notone of the persons to whom Celsus undertook to reply.

1 Die griechischen Apologeten, p. 107 note. I cannot find it in Briefwechsel desBeatus Rheimnm by Horawitz and Hartfelder, Leipzig, 1886. I understand, how-ever, from Prof. Kawerau, that it may be found in Epistolarum G. Wicelii libritres, Lipsiae, 1537.

22


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20 THE APOLOGYOne of the. leading beliefs in Aristides is that God made

all things for the sake of man. This doctrine he repeats invarious forms, shewing that the separate elements, the earth,the air, the fire, and the water together with the sun, moonand stars, are his ministers. Now Celsus seems to have beenparticularly opposed to this doctrine and to have discussed itat length : it was one of the points of contact between theStoic philosophy and the Jewish and Christian faiths, and Celsuswas, no doubt, well prepared to be diffuse on the subject bymany previous philosophical encounters.He draws ridiculous pictures of the philosophy of the frogs inthe swamp, of the ants in their ant-hill, and of bevies of bats,discussing the to them obvious proposition that the world hasbeen made solely for their benefit. Accordingly Origen remarks,7rapa7r\7jcrlov


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22 THE APOLOGYsomewhat original, viz. the doctrine of the races of the worldand of their origin.

Aristides divides the world into four races, the Barbarian, theGreek, the Jew, the Christian. The last two races are curiouslydescribed; the Jews derive their origin from Abraham, Isaac andJacob: they went down from Syria into Egypt; they came backfrom Egypt into Syria. As for the Christians, the new race, theyderive their origin from Jesus the Messiah, and He is called theSon of God Most High.Now in the first book against Celsus, Origen remarks asfollows : " Celsus promises that he will speak on the subjectof the Jews later on, and he begins his discourse concerningour Saviour, as being the leader of our generation in so far aswe are Christians\ and he goes on to say that he was the leader ofthis teaching, a few years ago, being regarded by the Christians asthe Son of God."Now it is worthy of note that if Celsus is handling any writtendocument, that document proceeded from the discussion of theJews to the Christians, affirmed Christ to be the head of the newrace, and declared that His followers regarded Him as the Sonof God. The agreement at this point with Aristides is certainlystriking.

When moreover we come to the discussion of the Jews, Celsusbreaks out that the 'Jews were mere Egyptian runaways, and thatthis darling people of God had never done anything worth remem-beringV just as if he had passed over the names of the Patriarchsand fastened on the admission that the Jews had come out ofEgypt. Accordingly Origen replies that it is universally agreedthat the Jews reckon their genealogy from Abraham, Isaac andJacob; aa


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OF ARISTIDES. 23philosopher rather than the Christian, and he forgets himself andintroduces the angels without even an explanation to the emperor,as to what beings are intended. What shall we say then when wefind Celsus afiBrming that the Jews worship angels^? Xeycov avrovq(T6^etv ayyeXovi Kal yoi^Teta irpocrKelaOau rj


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24 THE APOLOGYword of preliminary explanation of terms, makes a peroration ofthe impending judgment-day. And so the philosopher with animperial audience turns out to be another illustration of theChristian city that is set on a hill and cannot be hid.

It is especially interesting to observe that in the time ofAristides the Church already had a Symbol of the Faith : and wemay reconstruct a good many of its sentences. Of course in suchmatters we proceed from the things that are practically certain tothose which are less demonstrable ; we should not start by sayingthat the words "Maker of heaven and earth" were proof of theexistence of an approximately fixed symbol. But if we canestablish other sentences with good confidence, there is no reasonto omit these words from the reconstructed formula.

The certain passage from which we proceed is in the words"He was pierced (crucified) by the Jews;"He died and was buried;"" and they say that

after three days He rose,and ascended into Heaven."It may be taken for granted that these words represent a part

of the Symbolum Fidei as known to Aristides.What else may we say was contained in his creed ? We may

add words which must have stood respectively at the beginningand ending of the Creed: viz. that God was the Maker ofHeaven and Earth ; and that Jesus Christ was to come to judgethe world.

Whether we can go further is a more difficult question : butthere is at least a strong suspicion that the creed contained theclause "He was born of the Virgin Mary;" for in Aristides'statement the language about the ' Hebrew virgin ' precedes theaccount of the Crucifixion ; moreover, here also, we find Aristidesis most pronounced in the enunciation of the doctrine, and Celsusis emphatically scornful in the rejection of it. Accordingly Celsusbrings forward the story of the infidelity of Mary, affirming thatthe father of Jesus was in reality a soldier whose name wasPanthera\ The same story appears in the Talmud under thename Pandora, which is a transliteration of the foregoing.

1 Grig. c. Gels. i. 32.


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26 THE APOLOGYThe Armenian Fragment of the Apology,

We give, later on, the Latin translation of the Armenianfragment, as published by the Venetian editors. The passage hasalso been translated into German by von HimpeP, and thistranslation will be found in Harnack's Griechische Apologeten,pp. 110112. Von Himpel rightly affirms the Armenian text tohave been made from the Greek: it will be observed, however,that the Armenian text has the same lacuna as the Syriac inthe discourse on the four elements and the powers to which theyare respectively subject. This lacuna would seem to be an earlyfeature of the Greek text.There are one or two points in which we may get someauthority from the Armenian for the original text. For instanceinc. ii. where the Syriac reads that the origin of the Greeksis to be traced through "Danaus the Egyptian, and throughKadmus, and through Dionysus." Here the Armenian reads"Danaus the Egyptian and Kadmus the Sidonian and Dionysusthe Theban," and I am disposed to believe the words added in theArmenian belong there : for instance, we may compare Tatian'slanguage 2, "Dionysus is absolute sovereign over the Thebans."In a similar manner something seems to have dropped in theSjrriac after the statement that in God there is no distinctionof male or female ; for the Armenian text adds the reason"quia cupiditatibus agitatur qui huic est distinctioni obnoxius."Again in the opening sentences of the Apology the Armeniantext has the words, " Eum autem qui rector atque creator estomnium, investigare perdifficile est^" We recognize at once inthese words the ring of the characteristic Christian quotation fromthe Timaeus, which is usually employed to shew the superiorilluminating power of Christian grace over philosophic research,but seems here to be taken in the Platonic sense. The Armenianis perhaps a little nearer to the Platonic language than theSyriac; both versions however will claim the passage from theTimxieus as a parallel.

1 Till). Theol. Quartalschrift, 1877, ii. p. 289, f. 1880, i. p. 109127.2 Cohortatio, c. viii.^ Plato, Timaeus, 28 C, rbv /xeu ovv iroLTjTrjv Kal Traripa rovde rod wavrbs evpecu

re ^pyov Kai evpbvra els Trdiras dbijuarov X^yeiv.


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OF ARISTIDES. 27Allowing then for the occasional preservation of a passage in

greater purity by the Armenian fragment, we shall find that theArmenian translator has often made changes, and added glosses,and epitomized sentences. For example, in the summary of theChristian Faith, he describes the Son as the Logos, His mother asthe Theotokos. When the disciples are sent forth, in order that acertain oUovofiia may be fulfilled, the Armenian translator calls ita dispensation of illuminating truth; the preaching too is with'signs following,' ' comitantibus prodigiis,' which seems to comefrom Mark xvi. 20 and would be, if genuine, one of the earliestillustrations of that text. It will be seen how large an element ofparaphrase is found in the Armenian text.

The Armenian Fragment(from the Venice edition).

IMPERATORI C^SARI HADRIANO,ARISTIDES,

PHILOSOPHUS ATHENIENSIS.Ego, Rex, Dei providentia creatus, hunc mundum ingressus

sum, et caelis, terra ac mari, sole, luna et stellis, caeterisqueomnibus creaturis conspectis, huius mundi constitutionem ad-mirans miratus sum, atque conscius factus sum mihi, quoniamomnia quae sunt in mundo necessitate ac vi diriguntur, omniumcreatorem et rectorem esse Deum : quia iis omnibus quae regunturatque moventur, fortior est creator et rector.Eum autem, qui rector atque creator est omnium, investigareperdifficile atque in immensum pertinens mihi videtur: penitusvero eum et certa ratione describere, quum inexplicabilis etineffabilis sit, impossibile et sine uUa prorsus utilitate. Deusenim naturam habet infinitam, imperscrutabilem et creaturisomnibus incomprehensibilem. Hoc unum scire necesse est, quicreaturas universas Providentia sua gubernat, ipsum esse DominumDeum et creatorem omnium : quia visibilia omnia creavit bonitatesua, eaque humane generi donavit. Quapropter Ilium solum, ut-pote unum Deum, nos adorare et glorificare oportet : unumquem-que autem nostrum proximum suum sicut semetipsum diligere.


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28 THE APOLOGYVerumtamen de Deo saltern sciendum est, Eum ab alio factum

non fuisse, neque semetipsum fecisse, atque, a nullo circumscriptum,omnia comprehendere. Ex se ipsomet est\ Ipse sapientia immor-talis, principio et fine carens, immortalis atque aeternus, perfectus,nulli necessitati obnoxius, et necessitatibus omnium satisfaciens,nullo indigens et indigentiis omnium ipse magnificus opitulator.

Ipse est principio carens, quia, qui habet principium, habetet finem. Ipse sine nomine, quod quicumque nomine appellatur,creatus est factusque ab alio. Ei neque colores sunt neque formaquod, quicumque his praeditus est, mensurabilis est, limitibusquecogitur. Eius naturae nulla inest maris et feminae distinctio,quia cupiditatibus agitatur qui huic est distinctioni obnoxius.Ipse sub caelis incomprehensibilis est, quia caelos excedit : neecaeli caelorum Illo maiores sunt, quia caeli caelorum et creaturaeomnes quae sub caelis sunt, ab Illo comprehenduntur.

Ipsi nemo contrarius neque adversarius: quod si quis Eicontrarius et adversarius esse posset, eidem compar fieri videretur.

Ipse immobilis est atque praeter quemcumque terminum etcircuitum: quia ubi et unde moveri possit locus deest. Ipseneque mensura comprehendi, neque circumdari potest, quia Ipseomnia replet, atque est ultra omnes visibiles et invisibiles creaturas.Ipse neque ira, neque indignatione movetur, quia nulla caecitateafficitur, quum omnino et absolute sit intellectualis. Proptereahisce omnibus miraculis variis omnibusque beneficiis Ipse omniacreavit. Sacrificiis, oblationibus et hostiis Ipse non indiget, neque,ulla in re, visibilibus creaturis opus habet ; quia omnia replet, etomnium egestatibus satisfacit, Ipse numquam indigens ac sempergloriosus.

De Deo sapienter loqui ab ipso Deo mihi datum est, et promeis viribus locutus sum, quin tamen altitudinem imperscrutabilismagnitudinis Ejus comprehendere possem. Sola fide vero Iliumglorificans adoro.

Nunc igitur ad genus humanum veniamus et quinam praefatasveritates secuti fuerint videbimus, et quinam ab eis erraverint.Compertum est nobis, o Rex, quatuor esse humani generis stirpes,quae sunt Barbarorum, Graecorum, Hebraeorum atque Christian-orum. Ethnici et Barbari genus suum ducunt a Belo, Crono et

^ Sensus dubius : armeniaca verba idem sonant ac graeca avroyevh etdos.


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OF ARISTIDES. 29Hiera, aliisque suis Divis pluribus. Graeci vero a Jove, qui Zeusvel Jupiter dicitur, originem trahunt, per Helenum, Xuthum,aliosque eorum descendentes, nempe Helladem, Inacum, Phoro-neum, ac demum Danaum Aegyptium, Cadmum Sidonium, acDionysium Thebanum. Hebraei autem genus suum ducunt exAbrahamo, Isaaco, Jacobo, et duodecim Jacobi filiis, qui e Syriain Aegyptum se receperunt, et a legislatore suo Hebraei nuncupatifuerunt, inde vero terram promissionis ingressi, Judaei sunt appel-lati. Christianorum tandem genus a Domino Jesu Christo oritur.

Ipse Dei altissimi est Filius, et una cum Spiritu Sanctorevelatus est nobis : de caelis descendit ex Hebraea Virgine natus,ex Virgine carnem assumpsit, assumptaque humana natura, semet-ipsum Dei filium revelavit. Qui Evangelio suo vivificante mundumuniversum, consolatoria sua bonitate, sibi captivum fecit.

Ipse est Verbum, qui ex progenie Hebraica, secundum carnem,ex Maria virgine Deipara natus est. Ipse est qui Apostolosduodecim inter suos discipulos elegit, ut mundum universumdispensatione illuminantis Veritatis suae institueret. Ipse abHebraeis crucifixus est : a mortuis resurrexit et ad caelos ascenditin mundum universum discipulos suos mittens, qui divino etadmirabili lumine suo, comitantibus prodigiis, omnes gentessapientiam docerent. Quorum praedicatio in hunc usque diemgerminat atque friictificat, orbem universum vocans ad lucem.

Quatuor ergo nationes, O Rex, ostendi tibi : Barbaros, Graecos,Hebraeos atque Christianos.

Divinitati spiritualis natura propria est, Angelis ignea, dae-moniis aquosa, generique humane terrestris.**********

We have now reprinted all that is known of the Armeniantranslation of the Apology ; it is out of our limit and beyond ourmeasure to think of reprinting the actual Armenian text. Forthe purpose of comparison we add, however, another copy of thesame Armenian fragment, taken from a MS. at Edschmiazin, andtranslated into English by Mr F. C. Conybeare, of Oxford, forwhose kindly aid we are very grateful. According to the informa-tion which he has supplied, the MS. at Edschmiazin was writtenon paper, and is much worn by age. The date was certainly not


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80 THE APOLOGYlater than the eleventh century. The fragment from the Apologywhich it contains was followed by the fragment from the Homilyon the Penitent Thief. Here and there the text was illegible, andin these cases the missing words have been supplied from theVenice text, as reprinted by Pitra. The two texts in question aremoreover in very close agreement, except for the occasional addi-tion of a word or two by the Edschmiazin MS. The rendering isdesignedly a literal one.

The Armenian Fragment{from the Edschmiazin MS.).

TO THE AUTOCRATIC CAESAR ADRIANOSFROM ARISTIDES, ATHENIAN PHILOSOPHER.I, Ruler, who was by the providence of God created and

fashioned man in the world, and who have beheld the heaven andthe earth and the sea, the sun and the moon and the stars and allcreatures, wondered and was amazed at the eternal^ order thereof.I also by reflection learned that the world and all that is thereinis by necessity and force guided and moved and of the whole Godis controuler and orderer : for that which controuls is more power-ful than that which is controuled and moved. To enquire aboutHim who is guardian and controuls all things seems to me toquite exceed the comprehension and to be most difficult, and tospeak accurately concerning Him is beyond compass of thoughtand of speech, and bringeth no advantage; for His nature isinfinite and unsearchable, and imperceptible,^ and inaccessible toall creatures. "We can only know that He who governs by Hisprovidence all created things. He is Lord and God and creator ofall, who ordered all things visible in His beneficence, and gra-ciously bestowed them on the race of man. Now it is meet thatwe serve and glorify Him alone as God, and love one another asourselves. But this much alone can we know concerning God,

^ Here there is a copyist's error in the Edschmiazin text.2 Here the Edschmiazin text adds a word which means ' not to be observed or

looked at.'


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32 THE APOLOGYof receiving the truth of these sayings, and who are gone astray.It is manifest^ O Ruler, for there are four tribes^ of the humanrace. There are barbarians, and some are Greeks and othersHebrews, and there are who are Christians. But the heathensand barbarians count their descent from Baal, and fromCronos, and from Hera, and from many others of their gods.But the Greeks say Zeus (who is Dios) is their founder^ andreckon their descent from Helenos and Xuthos, and one afteranother from Hellas, Inachos and Phoroneus, and also finally fromDanaus the Egyptian, and from Cadmus the Sidonian, andDionysius the Theban.But the Jews reckon their race from Abraham, and Abraham'sson they say was Isaac, and from Isaac Jacob, and from Jacob thetwelve who migrated from Ass3n:ia into Egypt and were therenamed the tribes of the Hebrews by their lawgiver, and havingcome into the land of recompence, were named ^ the tribes ofthe Jews.

But the Christians reckon their race from the Lord JesusChrist. He is Himself Son of God on high, who was manifestedof the Holy Spirit, came down from heaven, and being born of aHebrew virgin took on His flesh from the virgin, and was mani-fested in the nature of humanity the Son of God : who sought towin the entire world to His eternal goodness by His life-givingpreaching^ He it is who was according to the flesh born of therace of the Hebrews, by the God-bearing^ virgin Miriam. He chosethe twelve disciples, and He by his illuminating truth, dispensing

1 So it stands in the Venice text : but in the Edschmiazin copy, for 'manifest'there is a word which means ' the name ' followed by a lacuna of a few letters, as ifthe scribe had intended to read ' I will recount the names, Euler,' or somethingof that kind.

2 The word answers to the Greek (f)v\ai or dTJixoi. In the same sense at the endof the fragment another word is used, answering rather to y^vr].

3 These three words are added to make sense, the whole passage being gram-matically much confused.

4 Here the Edschmiazin MS. was unreadable from age. The printed texthas no lacuna and gives no hint of the word whatever it was which was read inthe Edschmiazin text.

^ vayy4\iov.^ The word Qot6kos is implied.


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OF ARISTIDES. 33it\ taught all the world, and was nailed on the cross by the Jews.Who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and sent forthHis disciples into the whole world^ and taught all with divinelymiraculous and profoundly wise wonders. Their preaching untilthis day blossoms and bears fruit, and summons all the world toreceive the light.

These are the four tribes, whom we set before thee, O Ruler,Barbarians, Greeks, Jews and Christians. But to the Deity isappointed the spiritual, and to angels the fiery, and to devils thewatery, and to the race of men the earth.

An additional Armenian Fragment of Aristides.Over and above the fragments of the lost Apology of Aristides,

and the homily de Latrone, there is a scrap printed by Pitra in hisSpicilegium Solesmense which professes to come from an epistleof Aristides to all Philosophers. It is, as far as we can judge, inthe form in which we have it presented to us, a theologicalproduct of the time of the Monophysite controversy. But wemust bear in mind what we have learned from the Armenianfragment of the Apology, that an Armenian translation is madeup out of the matter of the original writer plus the terms anddefinitions of the translator, as for instance we see to have hap-pened in the ascription of the term SeoTofco^; to the BlessedVirgin. And the question is whether under the amplified folds ofthe theology of this fragment printed by Pitra there may behidden the more scanty terms of a theologian of the secondcentury, and if so, whether the writer be our Aristides, and thework quoted be the Apology or some other work. In order totest this point, we will give a rendering of the fragment intoGreek, for which again I am indebted to the kindness of MrConybeare.

^ OIkovo/ukSs is here rendered. Perhaps it should be taken as an epithet of' truth,' for in the original it precedes the word ' illuminating.'

^ OIkov/x^pijv.

H. A. 3


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S4 THE APOLOGY

Armenian Fragment.(Frag. iii. of Pitra.)

FROM AN EPISTLE OF ARISTIDES TOALL PHILOSOPHERS.

TldvT eirade iradrifiaTa qXtjOlvm avv avrov acofxaTi, o OeX^fiar^Kvplov Kol Tov dyiov TLuevfiaro^ Be^dfievo^, rjvcoae rrju adpKa^cavTO)^ TTjv irapd^ irapdivov 'Et^paiKrj^ t?}? d'yla^ MapLap, dpprjT^KaX dropw evoTTjri,

Now with reference to the foregoing passage, we may say atonce that the concluding terms are not second-century languageat all. On the other hand, the reference to the " Hebrew virgin "is precisely the language of the Apology. Further, the openingwords of the fragment, with their allusion to a real passion ofa real body, are certainly anti-Docetic, and therefore may be takenas second-century theology. We may compare with them thesentiments of the Ignatian epistles, as for example the letter tothe Smyrnaeans (c. ii.), where we read :

TavTa yap iravTa eiraOev Bi rjpd^* koI oKtjOw^ eiraOev, co? Ka\dXrjdou^ dvea-irjaev eavrov' ov^ wcnrep airiaroi rive^ XeyovaiP toBoKelu avTov ireirovBevai.

It does not, therefore, seem as if these words in the opening ofthe fragment were a translator s invention or addition. They havea second-century ring about them. If so, then the extract iseither a translation of a paragraph of the Apology, or of some othertract by the same writer, and probably the latter. We have,however, no means of discriminating further the original form ofthe sentence from the later accretions. It is, however, by nomeans impossible that the heading may be correct; that Aristidesmay have written an epistle or address to Philosophers on thesubject of the Christian religion in general, or of the Incarnationin particular.

1 The same word is used by the translator to render o-w^a and aAp^.* More exactly eauroO : an additional word being necessary in the Armenian in

order to give the sense ' conjunxit sibi ' : but the sense seems to require ^itoS.3 Or U.


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OF ARISTIDES. 37pierced by the Jews ; and He died and was buried ; and they saythat after three days He rose and ascended to heaven ; and thenthese twelve disciples went forth into the known parts of theworld, and taught concerning His greatness with all humility andsobriety ; and on this account those also who to-day believe in this 5preaching are called Christians, who are well known. There arethen four races of mankind, as I said before, Barbarians andGreeks, Jews and Christians.

To God then ministers wind, and to angels fire ; but to demonswater, and to men earth. 10

III. Let us then begin with the Barbarians, and by degrees wewill proceed to the rest of the peoples, in order that we may under-stand which of them hold the truth concerning God, and which ofthem error.

The Barbarians then, inasmuch as they did not comprehend isGod, erred with the elements; and they began to serve createdthings instead of the Creator of them^ and on this account theymade likenesses and they enclosed them in temples ; and lothey worship them and guard them with great precaution, thattheir gods may not be stolen by robbers ; and the Barbarians cohave not understood that whatsoever watches must be greaterthan that which is watched ; and that whatsoever creates mustbe greater than that whatever is created : if so be then that theirgods are too weak for their own salvation, how will they furnishsalvation to mankind ? The Barbarians then have erred with a 25great error in worshipping dead images which profit them not.And it comes to me to wonder also, king, at their philosophers,how they too have erred and have named gods those likenesseswhich have been made in honour of the elements; and the wisemen have not understood that these very elements are corruptible 30and dissoluble; for if a little part of the element be dissolvedor corrupted, all of it is dissolved and corrupted. If then theseelements are dissolved and corrupted, and compelled to be subjectto another harder than themselves, and are not in their naturegods, how can they call gods those likenesses which are made 3Sin their honour ? Great then is the error which their philosophershave brought upon their followers.

^ Rom. i. 25.


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38 THE APOLOGYIV. Let us turn then, O king, to the elements themselves,

in order that we may shew concerning them that they are notgods, but a creation, corruptible and changeable, which is in thelikeness of man\ But God is incoiriip!ible and unchangeable and oinvisible, while seeing, turning and changing all things. 5

Those therefore who think concerning earth that it is God havealready erred, since it is digged and planted and delved; and sinceit receives the defilement of the excrement of men and of beastsand of cattle : and since sometimes it becomes what is uselessfor if it be burned it becomes dead, for from baked clay there 10springs nothing : and again, if water be collected on it, it becomescorrupted along with its fruits : and lo ! it is trodden on by menand beasts, and it receives the impurity of the blood of theslain; and it is digged and filled with the dead and becomes arepository for bodies: none of which things can that holy and 15venerable and blessed and incorruptible nature receive. Andfrom this we have perceived that the earth is not God but acreature of God.V. And in like manner again have those erred who havethought concerning water that it is God. For water was created 20for the use of man and in many ways it is made subject to him.For it is changed, and receives defilement, and is corrupted, andloses its own nature when cooked with many things, and receivescolours which are not its own; being moreover hardened by the coldand mixed and mingled with the excrement of men and beasts 25and with the blood of the slain : and it is compelled by workmen,by means of tlie compulsion of channels, to flov^ and be conducted \against its own will, and to come into gardens and other places,60 as to cleanse and carry out all the filth of men, and washaway all defilement, and supply man's need of itself. Wherefore 30it is impossible that water should be God, but it is a work ofGod and a part of the world.

So too those have erred not a little who thought concerningfire that it is God : for it too was created for the need of menand in many ways it is made subject to them, in the service of 35food and in the preparation of ornaments and the other things of

1 Bom. i. 23.-


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OF ARISTIDES. 89which your majesty is aware : whilst in many ways it is extin-guished and destroyed.

And again those who have thought concerning the blast ofwinds that it is God, these also have erred : and this is evidentto us, that these winds are subject to another, since sometimes 5their blast is increased and sometimes it is diminished and ceases,according to the commandment of Him who subjects them. Sincefor the sake of man they were created by God, in order thatthey might fulfil the needs of trees and fruits and seeds, andthat they might transport ships upon the sea ; those ships which 10bring to men their necessary things, from a place where theyare found to a place where they are not found ; and furnish thedifferent parts of the world. Since then this wind is sometimesincreased and sometimes diminished, there is one place in whichit does good and another where it does harm, according to the a*nod of Him who rules it: and even men are able by means ofwell-known instruments to catch and coerce it that it may fulfilfor them the necessities which they demand of it : and over itselfit has no power at all; wherefore it is not possible that windsshould be called gods, but a work of God. 20

VI. So too those have erred who have thought concerning thesun that he is God. For lo ! we see him, that by the necessity ofanother he is moved and turned and runs his course; and heproceeds from degree to degree, rising and setting every day, inorder that he may warm the shoots of plants and shrubs, and 25may bring forth in the air which is mingled with him every herbwhich is on the earth. And in calculation the sun has a partwith the rest of the stars in his course, and although he is onein his nature, he is mixed with many parts, according to theadvantage of the needs of men : and that not according to his own 30will, but according to the will of Him that ruleth him. Where-fore it is not possible that the sun should be God, but a workof God ; and in like manner also the moon and stars.

VII. But those who have thought concerning men of old, thatsome of them are gods, these have greatly erred : as thou, even 35thou, king, art aware, that man consists of the four elementsand of soul and spirit, and therefore is he even called World, ^and apart from any one of these parts he does not exist. He has


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40 THE APOLOOrbeginning and end, and he is born and also suffers coiTUption.But God, as I have said, has none of this in His nature, butHe is unmade and incorruptible. On this account, then, it isimpossible that we should represent him as God who is man bynature, one to whom sometimes, when he looketh for joy, griefshappens ; and for laughter, and weeping befals him ; one that ispassionate and jealous, envious and regretful, along with therest of the other defects : and in many ways more corrupted thanthe elements or even than the beasts.

And thence, king, it is right for us to understand the loerror of the Barbarians, that, whereas they have not investigatedconcerning the true God, they have fallen away from the truthand have gone after the desire of their own mind, in servingelements subject to dissolution, and dead images: and on accountof their error they do not perceive who is the true God. ^5

VIII. Let us return now to the Greeks in order that we mayknow what opinion they have concerning the true God.

The Greeks then because they are wiser than the Barbarianshave eiTed even more than the Barbarians, in that they haveintroduced many gods that are made ; and some of them they have 20represented as male and some of them as female ; and in such away that some of their gods were found to be adulterers and .*murderers, and jealous and envious, and angry and passionate,and murderers of fathers, and thieves and plunderers. And theysay that some of them were lame and maimed ; and some of them 2$wizards, and some of them utterly mad ; and some of them playedon harps ; and some of them wandered on mountains : and someof them died outright ; and some were struck by lightning, andsome were made subject to men, and some went oif in flight, andsome were stolen by men ; and lo ! some of them were wept and 30bewailed by men ; and some, they say, went down to Hades ; andsome were sorely wounded, and some were changed into the like-ness of beasts in order that they might commit adultery with therace of mortal women ; and some of them have been reviled forsleeping with males : and some of them, they say, were in wedlock 35with their mothers and sisters and daughters ; and they say oftheir gods that they committed adultery with the daughters ofmen, and from them was born a certain race which was also


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OF ARISTIDES: 41mortal. And of some of their goddesses they say that they con-tended about beauty and came for judgment before men. TheGreeks, then, O king, have brought forward what is wicked,ridiculous and foolish concerning their gods and themselves; inthat they called such like persons gods, who are no gods: and r^hence men have taken occasion to commit adultery and fornica-tion, and to plunder and do everything that is wicked andhateful and abominable. For if those who are called their godshave done all those things that are written above, how muchmore shall men do them who believe in those who have done lothese things! and from the wickedness of this error, lo ! therehave happened to men frequent wars and mighty famines, and bittercaptivity and deprivation of all things : and lo ! they endure them,and all these things befal them from this cause alone : and whenthey endure them they do not perceive in their conscience that 15because of their error these things happen to them.

IX. Now let us come to the history of these their gods inorder that we may prove accurately concerning all those thingswhich we have said above.

Before everything else the Greeks introduce as a god Kronos, 20which is interpreted Chiun ; and the worshippers of this deity sacri-fice to him their children : and some of them they burn while yetliving. Concerning him they say that he took him Rhea to wife ;and from her he begat many sons ; from whom he begat also Dios,who is called Zeus ; and at the last he went mad and, for fear of 25an oracle which was told him, began to eat his children. Andfrom him Zeus was stolen away, and he did not perceive it : andat the last Zeus bound him and cut oft' his genitals and cast themin the sea ; whence, as they say in the fable, was born Aphrodite,who is called Astera: and he cast Kronos bound into darkness. ..a*Great then is the error and scorn which the Greeks have intro-duced concerning the head of their gods, in that they have saidall these things about him, O king. It is not possible that Godshould be bound or amputated ; otherwise it is a great misfortune.

And after Kronos they introduce another god, Zeus ; and they 35say concerning this one, that he received the headship and becameking of all the gods ; and they say concerning him that he waschanged into cattle and everything else, in order that he might


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OF ARISTIDESi 43avaricious, or maimed, or coveting anything that is not his, or anathlete : and if it be found to be otherwise, he is of no use.

And after him they introduce another god, Asclepius; andthey say that he is a physician and prepares medicines and ^ 1bandages in order that he may satisfy his need of sustenance. Is 5 |then this god in need ? And he at last was struck by lightning

]by Zeus, on account of Tyndareus the Lacedemonian; and soj

he died. If then Asclepius was a god, and when struck by light-j

ning was unable to help himself, how is it that he was able to helpj

others ? Whereas it is an impossible thing that the divine nature 10 |should be in need, or that it should be struck by lightning.

And again they introduce another god and call him Ares, andjthey say that he is a warrior and jealous, and covets sheep and ;

things which do not belong to him, and acquires possessions 1through his weapons; and of him they say that at last he com- 15 1mitted adultery with Aphrodite and was bound by a tiny boy !Eros, and by Hephaestus the husband of Aphrodite : whereas it is ca*impossible that a god should be a warrior or a prisoner or an *:adulterer. '

And again they say of Dionysus that he too is a god, who 20celebrates festivals by night and teaches drunkenness, and carriesoff women that do not belong to him : and at the last they say ithat he went mad and left his female attendants and fled to

j

the wilderness; and in this madness of his he ate serpents; andat the last he was killed by Titan. If then Dionysus was a god, 25and when slain was not able to help himself; how is it that he

j

was able to help others ?Herakles, too, they introduce, and they say of him that he is \

a god, a hater of things hateful, a tyrant and a warrior, and aslayer of the wicked : and of him they say that at the last he 30went mad and slew" his children and cast himself into the fireand died. If therefore Herakles be a god and in all these evils

jwas unable to stand up for himself, how was it that others were )asking help from him ? Whereas it is impossible that a god should ]be mad or drunken or a slayer of his children, or destroyed by 35fire. )

XI. And after him they introduce another god and call him "*Apollo : and they say of him that he is jealous and changeable; and 1

i


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44* THE APOLOGYsometimes he holds a bow and a quiver, and sometimes a lyre anda plectrum; and he gives oracles to men, in order that he mayreceive a reward from them. Is then this god in need of reward ? a*Whereas it is disgraceful that all these things should be foundin a god. 5And after him they introduce Artemis a goddess, the sisterof Apollo ; and they say that she was a huntress ; and she carrieda bow and arrows, and went about on mountains leading dogs,either to hunt the deer or the wild boars. Whereas it is disgracefulthat a maid should go about by herself on mountains and follow lothe chase of beasts. And therefore it is not possible that Artemisshould be a goddess.

Again they say of Aphrodite that she foi-sooth is a goddess;and sometimes forsooth she dwells with their gods, and sometimesshe commits adultery with men ; and sometimes she has Ares for iSher lover and sometimes Adonis, who is Tammuz : and sometimesforsooth Aphrodite is wailing and weeping for the death ofTammuz : and they say that she went down to Hades in orderthat she might ransom Adonis from Persephone, who was thedaughter of Hades. If then Aphrodite be a goddess and was 20unable to help her lover in his death, how is she able to helpothers ? And this is a thing impossible to be listened to, that thedivine nature should come to weeping and wailing and adultery.

And again they say of Tammuz that he is a god ; and he isforsooth a hunter and an adulterer ; and they say that he was killed 25by a blow from a wild boar, and was not able to help himself. V*And if he was not able to help himself, how is he able to takecare of the human race ? And this is impossible, that a godshould be an adulterer or a hunter or that he should have died byviolence. 30

And again they say of Rhea that she forsooth is the mother oftheir gods ; and they say of her that she had at one time a loverAtys, and she was rejoicing in corruptible men ; and at the lastshe established lamentations, and was bewailing her lover Atys.If then the mother of their gods was not able to help her lover 35and rescue him from death, how is it possible that she shouldhelp others ? It is disgraceful then that a goddess should lamentand weep, and that she should have joy over corruptible beings.


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OF ARISTIDES. *0Again they bring forward Kore ; and they say that she was a

goddess and that she was carried off by Pluto and was not able tohelp herself. If then she is a goddess and was not able to helpherself, how is she able to help others? For a goddess w^ho iscarried off is extremely weak. 5

All these things, then, O king, the Greeks have introducedabout their gods, and have invented and said concerning themwhence all men have taken occasion to do all wicked and impurethings : and thereby the whole earth has been corrupted.

XI I. Now the Egyptians, because they are more evil andignorant than all peoples upon the earth, have erred more thanall men. For the worship of the Barbarians and the Greeks didnot suffice them, but they introduced also the nature of beasts, andsaid concerning it that they were gods : and also of the creepingthings which are found on the dry land and in the waters, and of 15the plants and herbs they have said that some of them are gods,and they have become corrupt in all madness and impurity morethan all peoples that are upon the earth. For of old time theyworshipped Isis; and they say that she forsooth is a goddess,who had forsooth a husband Osiris, her brother ; but when forsooth 20Osiris was killed by his brother Typhon, Isis fled with her sonHorus to Byblos in Syria and was there for a certain time untilthat her son was grown : and he contended with his uncle Typhonand killed him, and thereupon Isis returned and went about withher son Horus, and was seeking for the body of Osiris her lord, 25and bitterly bewailing his death. If therefore Isis be a goddess,and was not able to help Osiris her brother and lord, how is itpossible that she should help others ? Whereas it is impossiblethat the divine nature should be afraid and flee, or weep andwail. Otherwise it is a great misfortune. 30

But of Osiris they say that he is a god, a beneficent oneand he was killed by Typhon and could not help himself; and it isevident that this cannot be said of Deity.

And again they say of Typhon, his brother, that he is a god, J\^a fratricide, and slain by his brother's son and wife since he was 35unable to help himself. And how can one who does not helphimself be a god ?

Now because the Egyptians are more ignorant than the rest of


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46 THE APOLOGYthe peoples, these and the like gods did not suffice them, butthey also put the name of gods on the beasts which are merelysoulless. For sortie men among them worship the sheep, andothers the calf; and some of them the pig, and others the shad-fish ; and some of them the crocodile, and the hawk, and the 5cormorant, and the kite, and the vulture, and the eagle, and thecrow ; some of them worship the cat, and others the fish Shibbutasome of them the dog, and some of them the serpent, and somethe asp, and others the lion, and others garlic, and onions, andthorns, and others the leopard, and the like. 10

And the poor

Harris, Robinson. The Apology of Aristides on behalf of the Christians : from a Syriac ms. preserved...

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Transcript of Harris, Robinson. The Apology of Aristides on behalf of the Christians : from a Syriac ms. preserved...